how to turn jeans into a skirt

This is very easy. The difficult part is protecting your ripper and your sewing machine from the thick fabric.

The lucky pair of jeans that I reconstructed was this:

I bought this more than five years ago. It’s large not because I lost weight. It doesn’t fit me well because when I was still an undergrad I had no idea how to buy a pair of jeans that hugged my legs in all the right places.

TUTORIAL

1. Measure your skirt length.

2. Cut. Do not forget hem allowances.

3. Once you cut the two legs, you will have something that looks like this:

4. Rip the inseam. This would be the seam that starts from the crotch. If you’re reconstructing heavy denim (this one is canvass-like), you may use cutter for ripping. I have heard stories of people breaking their rippers while doing this project. Just be very careful.

5. Once you’re done ripping both inseams, you will have something that looks like this:

6. Now rip the seam all the way to the bottom of the front zipper. Do the same to the back side. Make sure to rip all the way to the butt area. 

8. At this point, you will have something similar to this:

10. Pin the parts you ripped apart. Front leg to the other front leg. Back leg to the other back leg. Your skirt will be recognizable at this point. Sew and hem. Make sure that the front part is flat and not bunchy when you sew the legs together. You might need to patch (with fabric taken from the pant legs you cut off) this part so that you’ll have a flat area.

AND YOU’RE DONE!

And here is my skirt. The color is a bit faded because I took these this morning while the tutorial pics were taken last night.

FRONT

SIDE

BACK

Thanks for looking and happy sewing!